EFFECT OF RISING FOOD PRICES ON CASSAVA FARMING HOUSEHOLDS IN ONDO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Cassava is one of the main sources of world carbohydrate with Africa recognized as the highest producing continent and Nigeria as the highest producing country. Cassava provides food security as it can be grown on less fertile soils, it is a source of income for farmers and provides food for many household .The study therefore examined the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents; measure the extent of food security status among cassava farming households; determine the extent of vulnerability to food insecurity among cassava farmers; and examine the coping strategies adopted by cassava farmers for food insecurity in the study area. A multistage sampling procedure was used to select 120 respondents that were used for this study. At the first stage, two Local Government Areas that are rural and noted for food production were purposively chosen- Ifedore and Akure North. At the second stage, ten communities were randomly chosen from the two selected Local Governments Area at an average of five per Local Government Area. At the third and final stage, six households were randomly selected from the selected communities making a total of one hundred and twenty respondents. Data collected from the field were analyzed using descriptive statistics, food security index and Feasible Generalized Least Square (FGLS). The results revealed that the average age of the respondent was 48 years in which some (38.3%) of the respondents were within the age of 41 and 50 years. Majority (76.7%) of the respondents were male, while 57.5% of the respondents had at least secondary school education. The implication of this is that majority of the respondent are educated and this could help them to be food secured. About 86% of the respondents had over five persons per house which implies that many of the respondents have relatively large household size, and this can lead to food insecurity. About 58% chose cassava farming as main occupation, while many (54.2%) of the respondents earned less than ₦50, 000 monthly. This implies that majority of the respondents are low income earners and this could make them vulnerable to food insecurity. The food security line of N1, 188.91 per month was used as benchmark to disaggregate food insecure and food secure households. About 54.2% of the respondents were food insecure while 45.8% were food secure. The food surplus gap result shows that the food secure households exceeded the food security line by 49.6%, while the food insecure household fell below the food security by 58.5%. The mean per-capita food expenditure was N710.45 for food insecure households while that of food secure households was N1,541.90 on monthly basis. The results of FGLS in measuring vulnerability to food insecurity showed that : age of the respondents, frequency of food intake, number of dependants, years of education, number of people working, cassava farming experience, main occupation, farm size, were the main determinants of food consumption expenditures in the study area. The mean vulnerability was 0.59 and the vulnerability to food insecurity was higher among female cassava households than their male counterpart by 32%. The incidence of vulnerability was about 68.34% in which female household took about 82%. Again, the results of coping strategies showed that cash and kind request, reduced quantity of food served to women and sale of durable assets were the frequently used strategies to cushion the effect of vulnerability to food insecurity in the study area. The study concluded that a good number of cassava farming households are food insecure and vulnerable to food insecurity in the study area. Despite the food insecurity among them, the farmers still cope with the insecurity for survival using different strategies. The major determinants of vulnerability of cassava farmers to food insecurity are: age of the respondents, frequency of food intake, number of females, number of dependents, years of education, number of people working, cassava farming experience, main occupation and farm size